Without any official announcement, Sony has made a series of animated themes available for thePlayStation 5’s home screen. Customization has been somewhat lacking this console generation; almost every piece of hardware has a generic home screen, with an array of games, a color gradient, and some ambient background music (if you’re lucky).There’s a reason for the change: home screens are a lot more interactive now, with game trailers, splash screens, and intro music available at the press of a button. Still, the ability to customize your home screen was sorely missed - until now, that is.
Per @Genki_JPNon X (formerly Twitter) viaVideo Games Chronicle, animated Welcome hub themes are now available for a select few players. Themes are based on a wide variety of Sony-published games, includingGhost of Yotei,God of War,Demon’s Souls,Horizon, andStellar Blade. Themes only affect the Welcome tab of your homescreen; scrolling away will replace them with content from the game or app you’re rolling over. Since Sony hasn’t said anything on the topic,it’s not clear how these users were selected, or when the feature will roll out universally.
PlayStation 5 Gets Themes For Its Iconic Franchises
Every New PS5 Theme & How To Set Them
Again,the new PS5 themes focus on games that Sony had a hand in, either designing them or publishing them, including theupcomingGhost of Yotei. They do not, unfortunately, include timed PS5 exclusives published by other companies - yourDeath Standingsor yourFinal Fantasies, as it were. The list below includes every single game that now has its own animated theme available for PS5.
Not all these themes are available to some players: only a select few have access to them at all, and some players can only choose from a limited set of themes. All players appear to have access tothe animatedAstro Bottheme, along with a series of artistic static images. It’s not clear how it was decided which themes went to which players; it’s possible that you may only gain access to themes based on games that you own.
You may also set any image stored locally on your PS5 as the Welcome hub’s background.
In order to change your theme, open the Welcome tab on your PS5’s home screen, and scroll down to the customization options. You’ll seean icon that looks like a landscape photo; hover over it and hit X to see all the backgrounds available to you. Animated backgrounds will be available in the “Games” section.
New PS5 Themes Are Cool, But Players Miss The Classic Themes
Customization Used To Be Deeper
It’s nice to see the PS5 making themes available once again, but in a way, it’s too little, too late. Back in my day,you used to get a PS4 theme just about any time you preordered a game- it was kind of the go-to throw-in for any standard edition buy. Themes were all-encompassing: they’d change the background music, and would show up throughout the entire home screen, even when you rolled over a particular game.
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There were a lot of great game-specific themes, butthere were a lot of cheap asset flips, too. You could also buy themes through the PS Store, usually on sale for no more than 25 cents, and a lot of them just consisted of simple 3D models with generic animations and royalty-free soundtracks - cartoon animals, scantily clad women, or seven-pronged leaves doing low-energy dances over generic dubstep. Maybe removing them is part ofPlayStation’s attempt to combat shovelware, but in doing so, it’s taken away a lot of customization freedom.
Ultimately, it just seems weird to make themes available so late in the PS5’s life - but I’ll take it. Personally, I’m eyeing up thatDemon’s Soulstheme - maybe I’ll switch toGhost of Yoteionce we finally get a release date. It’ll be a nice way to make yourPlayStation 5home screen look your own, and could open the door to more extensive themes in the future.
